Smatterings
by Saro
Summary: Collections of hundred word drabbles written for the Stages of Love comm on livejournal. Sorted by pairing and theme.
1. SasukeNaruto

Author's Note: These are series of drabbles written for the Stages of Love comm on livejournal. Each series consists of five one hundred word drabbles. Each series will be posted by pairing/challenge. Couples will vary. Het, yaoi, and friendship. I like many pairings, and I expect that if I continue to write these, that will show. Raiting may go up for later series.

Feedback is always welcome.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, and I make no money off of this.

Chapter Warnings: Sasuke/Naruto, friendship or light shounen ai. Nothing explicit. Some language.

**Gravity**

It wasn't attraction.

Attraction is something else. It's something soft, something pretty and comfortable. I don't know... gentle. I guess. Or maybe I just don't know what it is.

But when Naruto looked at me with red in his eyes, he was none of those things. When he punched me in the face, it wasn't tender or romantic. He meant it when he called me a coward and said he didn't know me.

It was a rivalry, but that wasn't right either.

It was something I needed. It was a fucking force of nature.

It wasn't attraction. It was gravity.

**Polarity**

Every part of me hurt as I fell to my knees beside him. The mud felt good against my knees. The rain was almost a relief on my skin.

In the end, I couldn't do it. I had thought I would be able to. But after everything, I couldn't quite make myself end it. I'd broken whatever bond was between us, I'm sure. But I couldn't kill him. I wanted the power, but not at that cost.

My forehead-protector lay scratched and battered nearby. He'd pulled his punch first.

I touched his face before I left. He was so cold.

**Chemistry**

I suppose that it's natural to forget sometimes that he'd have grown up too. When I saw him, older, taller, more assured than he ever was when we were young, I remembered all at once.

Just seeing him, I could hardly breathe. I could hardly see. It hurt so much. I felt so much.

I needed to be better than him. I needed to have grown more. If he was as strong as me, then the last three years would have been for nothing.

I could tell as I met his determined stare and matched it, he felt the same.

**Sympathy **

He and I, we were too alike in some ways, so different in others. I'm amazed neither of us killed the other just to prove a point. I'm amazed neither of us let ourselves be killed for the same reason.

It was always the way with us. Like the last time, we both fought past the point our bodies could endure. When Orochimaru would have killed him, I surprised even myself when I found the strength to stop him.

We had fought each other, hurt each other, each struggling to better the other... and in the end, we bled together.

**Inevitability**

Naruto healed well. A week after the war ended there wasn't a scratch on him, let alone a scar. I was still in bed.

He visited me. I couldn't imagine why. I had surrendered after that last fight - not much choice in the matter - and a trial pended my recovery. I wasn't exactly the most popular person in the world just then. Sakura came as well, less often. I don't think she liked the seals painted over my eyes.

But Naruto visited, and talked casually.

Eventually, he asked, "Will you stay?"

"I don't plan on leaving." And I meant it.


	2. JiraiyaTsunade

Author's Note: See first chapter.

**Near Miss**

Jiraiya's fingers hovered an inch above Tsunade's quaking shoulders. If he touched her, she would turn. She would vent her hurt on him in one freakishly strong blow. It would have been a pure relief to be the object of her temper just then.

Orochimaru snorted, smiling at Jiraiya and Tsunade both in that insufferable, superior manner of his.

It was a measure of her grief that she never even noticed how close he came to touching her.

Dan had been dead an hour.

He was gone, and Jiraiya was sick to his stomach.

Because he still couldn't touch her.

**Turns**

The flush of liquor filled her face and colored her cleavage. She smiled brightly. Jiraiya smiled back, raising his cup with her. They celebrated a night of winning. Tsunade's luck - it seemed - had finally improved.

They drank and ate. Her treat.

At one point, Tsunade leaned forward on her crossed arms. Her breasts strained against the front of her shirt but Jiraiya, for once, was more interesting in the warm look in her eyes.

"Why don't we do this more often?" she asked.

"Because you are a terrible gambler," he told her. She laughed.

The next day, Orochimaru betrayed Konoha.

**Chances**

Being Godaime agreed with Tsunade the same way motherhood agreed with some women. She glowed with it. Jiraiya could only stand back and watch dumbfounded.

She looked younger - really looked younger, in a way that had nothing to do with skills or illusions. The cynical, jaded edge was gone from her eyes when she smiled at Konoha, working for her home.

He wasn't fool enough to picture what could have been between them. There were no babies in his mind, or grandchildren he would never have.

But he wished that just once...

...she would have smiled that way at him.

**All of our Past**

Jiraiya found her far from the celebration, shielded from the noise and youthful exuberance. She sat on a bench, drinking while she gazed up at the old Hokages' faces.

He sympathized with her. He knew what it meant to lose another of their generation, with more of them dead, now, than living. He knew how it felt when the hero of the day was young enough to be your grandson.

He knew that if he were anyone else, she wouldn't have invited him to sit with her. But because he was who he was, he sat and shared her sake.

**In the End**

Jiraiya didn't have the energy to be excited before a battle anymore. The memory of waking up the morning before a mission with anything other than aching joints was dark with age.

Children these days were monsters. He doubted he was ever so bloodthirsty.

The giant snake, Manda, slithered toward Konoha, deceptively sedate. There was no surprise to it. No ploy. The figure on his head stood straight, proud, and utterly implacable. Once, perhaps, this would have put butterflies in his stomach. Now, he just felt tired.

Tsunade found his and squeezed. "Have one fight left in you, old man?"


	3. NarutoNeji

Chapter Warnings: This series of drabbles was written for the Stages of Sex challenge, and thus are thremed desire, excitement, plateau of arousal, orgasm, and resolution. These are a bit graphic, but no more than you might find in a fairly racy R rated movie.

Naruto/Neji

**The First**

It could've been an accident that Naruto was there when Neji made his lap around the outer wall. The village wasn't so big that coincidences like that weren't common.

Neji didn't have to stop when he saw Naruto. He could have kept running.

Neji stopped, and his white eyes took in Naruto patiently. "What are you doing here?"

Naruto opened his mouth. He could have said, nothing, and then Neji could continue his training. Naruto opened his mouth, a lie twisting on his tongue. He

stopped, swallowed it, and said instead, "This."

It could've been an accident.

But it wasn't.

**The Second**

Naruto pushed Neji against the outer wall of Konoha. His hands tore down the zipper on Neji's flak vest; he rucked up Neji's shirt, curling his fingers so blunt nails dug into skin and muscle. The Hyuuga's stomach quivered, taut and feverish

Neji's mouth tasted of salt, of metal, and sugar, but underneath it all, something astringent. He was hardly a flavor at all. He tasted clean and vaguely sterile, but in a way that stung Naruto's mouth.

If they didn't move, it wouldn't be long before the next patrol found them.

They kissed frantically as Naruto counted the minutes.

**The Third**

On the training grounds. In the woods. Hidden in the backroom of a sake house while their friends drank and celebrated up front.

Naruto bit Neji's shoulder, stifling a growl as the Hyuuga jerked him roughly through his fly. Slow, sticky warmth flushed his body. Sharper, tingling heat pricked up his spine. Neji's other hand held Naruto's bicep as though steadying him, but worn nails dug into Naruto's skin hard, drawing blood.

Neji choked on his own gasps, and each hot breath fanned Naruto's face.

"Someone will miss us soon..." Neji whispered.

Equally soft, Naruto answered, "We'll finish quick then."

**The Fourth**

Risk drew Naruto to Neji time and again; the risk, the sounds, the salt and sweat of the other man's body as it moved with his.

Neji's white eyes looked down at him, strangely remote, until Naruto couldn't bear to meet them. He closed his eyes and braced himself on Neji's hip. His tongue curved across the underside of Neji's cock.

He heard the catch in Neji's breath, tasted precum, felt Neji trace his ear. He saw the way Neji's muscles tensed, the way the twitched.

Their teammates waited not twenty meters away.

Luckily, Neji wasn't vocal when he came.

**The Fifth**

"I should go," Neji said softly, voice smooth, not quite whispering against Naruto's skin.

Sheets tangled with their legs, clinging to damp skin and holding close the smell of their sex. Naruto's fingers tangled in the other's hair, holding him still while he nuzzled Neji's neck, his ear.

"Fifteen more minutes."

Neji's scent was thick in Naruto's nose; flavor, sharp on his tongue.

"You're cutting it close."

Neji stroked Naruto's side. It was a gesture Naruto was starting to recognize.

"I'll worry about that," Naruto murmured.

And for fifteen minutes, they ignored the photo laying face down on the nightstand.


End file.
